Sophia certainly did not stop to seek an excuse for her interest. She plied Alec with questions; she moved with him nearer the Harmon fence to get a better look at the house; she assured him that Chellaston was the last place in the world to harbour an adventurer.
He was a little loth, for the sake of all the pathos of Bates's story, to suggest the suspicion that had recurred.
"I saw the face twice. It was first at Turrifs Station, far enough away from here; and I saw it again in this house. As sure as I'm alive, I believe it was a woman."
They stood on the verge of the field where the grass sloped back from the river. Sophia held the little child's hand in hers. The dusk was gathering, and still they talked on, she questioning and exclaiming with animation, he eager to enter the house again, a mutual interest holding their minds as one.
He began to move again impatiently. He wanted a candle with which to search the rooms more carefully, and if nothing was found, he said, he would go to the village and make what inquiries he could; he would leave no stone unturned.
Sophia would not let him go alone. She was already on perfectly familiar terms with him. He seemed to her a delightful mixture of the ardent boy and the man who, as she understood it, was roughened by lumberman's life. She lifted Dottie on her shoulder and turned homeward. "I will only be a few minutes getting Harold and some candles; don't go without us, I beg of you," she pleaded.
He never thought of offering to carry the child, or call her brother for her; his ideas of gallantry were submerged in the confusion of his thoughts. He watched her tripping lightly with the child on her shoulder. He saw her choose a path by the back of the white dairy buildings, and then he heard her clear voice calling, "Harold! Harold!" All up the yard's length to windows of house and stable he heard her calling, till at length came the answering shout. In the silence that followed he remembered, with a feeling of wonder, the shudder of distaste that had come over him when he found that the other creature with whom he had been dealing bore a woman's form. He could not endure to think of her in the same moment in which he longed to hear Miss Rexford's voice again and to see her come back. In the one case he could not believe that evil was not the foundation of such eccentricity of mystery; in the other he thought nothing, realised nothing, he only longed for Sophia's return, as at times one longs for cool air upon the temples, for balm of nature's distilling. He never thought that because Sophia was a woman she would be sure to keep him waiting and forget the candle. He felt satisfied she would do just what she said, and even to his impatience the minutes did not seem long before he saw her return round the same corner of the outbuildings, her brother beside her, lantern in hand.
So in the waning daylight the three went together to the Harmon house, and found torn bits of letters scattered on floor and window-sill near the spot where Alec had last seen the unlooked-for apparition. The letters, to all appearance, had belonged to the dentist, but they were torn very small. The three searched the house all through by the light of more than one candle, and came out again into the darkness of the summer night, for the time nothing wiser concerning the mystery, but feeling entirely at home with one another.
CHAPTER X.
Although Mrs. Rexford had been without an indoor servant for several months of the winter, she had been fortunate enough to secure one for the summer. Her dairy had not yet reached the point of producing marketable wares, but it supplied the family and farm hands with milk and butter, and, since the cows had been bought in spring, the one serving girl had accomplished this amount of dairy work satisfactorily. The day after Sophia and Harold had made their evening excursion through the Harmon house, this maid by reason of some ailment was laid up, and the cows became for the first time a difficulty to the household, for the art of milking was not to be learnt in an hour, and it had not yet been acquired by any member of the Rexford family.